


The Inharmonious Place Between Awake and Asleep

by Estel



Series: All Those Yesterdays [6]
Category: Minority Report (TV 2015)
Genre: Gen, Insomnia, Medication, Sleep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-12
Updated: 2015-10-12
Packaged: 2018-04-26 01:14:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4984189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Estel/pseuds/Estel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The truth about Dash's insistence that he doesn't sleep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Inharmonious Place Between Awake and Asleep

Tonight he thought about sleep.

It made Dash feel strong to say he didn’t sleep. The ounce of strength it provided gave him power over his past.

The truth was far more complicated. It was all largely based on fact: he didn’t easily fall asleep. Ever since they came out of the milk bath, he struggled to sleep. Perhaps even before, but he didn’t recall.

Their specialists seemed to think it was a mix of trauma from his visions and over-stimulation of his pons resulting in extreme interruption of his natural sleeping cycles. He’d tried traditional medication, herbal remedies, meditation, and all sorts of positive habit-forming techniques, and none had wholly ideal results. Perhaps it was because he had so little regard for his need to sleep, but the more likely answer was that he reacted poorly to the in-between.

All of the best solutions had been medicine or herbs. As soon as the issue was identified, he was put on a sleep-regulating medication, but the drowsy periods before he fell asleep left him screaming in fear of waking up back in the milk bath. Most medications had a similar result and the effect never faded.

At least the herbal remedies had the decency to ease him softly to sleep, but once sleep came, it was plagued with anxiety or he would wake up groggy, leaving him paranoid or grumpy for the remainder of the day.

There was little he could do to change it. When he felt the need to sleep catch up to him, he did. When he didn’t, he filled the hours with reading, running, and on rare occasions socializing.

Instead of providing everyone with a dissertation as to why he didn’t sleep, he rallied against the injustice done to him and his siblings by saying the words and giving himself one more grain of power over his fears.

It made tonight special.

Dash sat, cross-referencing leads on the latest tragedy to interject itself into his life. Outside the city raged on. He could hear it through his paper-thin walls he could barely afford, but it didn’t keep him from slowly succumbing to the weight of his eyelids. If he was lucky, the night wouldn’t send another vision and this would be one of the rare instances in which he cut past his Paradoxical Insomnia and plunges into true deep sleep.

That would be the real victory.


End file.
